I was hoping Mary would do this again this year.  One thing I’m thankful for each day shouldn’t be too hard, right?  The only hard part is November is one of the busiest months of my year, which means very little blogging (usually).  I am grateful for so many things, though, and definitely need to put a voice to those thoughts.

Here’s my first five:

1.  I am SO grateful my husband is home after a longer than expected guys trip.  I was feeling pretty sad there towards the end.

2.  Good friends who read good books and then lend them to me.  Good book recommendations are always welcome, friend or not.

3.  Work.  Even though it means I’ll get very little of the things I want to done the next few months.

4.  Aaron’s work.  Hard economic times, everyone’s suffering, yada-yada-yada.  You know the drill and so do we.  We are both amazingly grateful and feel immensely blessed every time we pick up a new job, bring home another paycheck, and veg on the couch Sunday nights after a long week of work.  Even if things are a lot tighter than they were a year or too ago, we are just happy to be able to pay our bills.

5.  This year’s music link of choice: Pandora.  I’ve been listening to a steady stream of Cake radio for the last week or so.  Love it.

The last time I was in Idaho, my mom sent me home with my Christmas present early.

Three balls of Rambouillet/Columbia wool and a humongous skein of pure Rambouillet.  Both are undyed and 2-ply, and very, very squishy.

I love homegrown, rustic fibers.  I love the sheepy smell of the yarn and how when you squeeze it your hands come away all lanolin-y.  And, I love supporting small, indie farms, businesses, and designers.

Mom picked this up at our local farmer’s market from Jerry Lee Farm.  Great present, Mom.  Seriously great stuff.  Now I just have to figure out what to knit with it.  Any ideas?

Oh, and be sure to click on the link to the farm, if for no other reason than to be totally jealous of the type of setup I grew up on.

A project from a couple of months ago, but one I forgot to take pictures of before I gave it away.  Thanks Mindie for helping me out.

Blanket details:
Pattern:  Heart Blanket
Yarn:  Berroco Comfort in 9702 Pearl – 4 balls

Amidst all of the knitting I’ve been doing lately, I did manage to finish up the quilting on the Penn Dutch Tree block.  Only two more blocks left to go, one pieced and one appliqued, before I can start putting the quilt together.

Well, I didn’t end up getting Aaron’s sweater done before he left on his big guys’ trip, but I did manage to finish his hat.

I ended up doing a lot more knitting on this hat than was necessary.  I knit the whole thing according to the pattern then gave it to him to try on, which is when we found that his head was 3 inches bigger than the head size in the pattern.  So I ripped it all out.  Then I knit it again, this time modifying the pattern to accommodate his big head size, but I wasn’t quite sure how tall to knit it before decreasing and also how to add in the extra decreases caused by the extra cast on stitches.  So I winged it, modifying as I went the best I could and hoping for the best.  I had to rip out half the hat again and redo the decreases after it ended up looking like a hat for a conehead, but I eventually did get it all figured out.  I sewed in the brim piece (which was super fiddly) in time for our anniversary last week, two days before he left.

I knit like a madwoman on his sweater right up until he left but still wasn’t able to get it done.  I think I would have been able to finish if I would not have had to rip out the sleeves, twice.  I’m using Cascade 220, which has a slightly smaller gauge than the yarn called for in the pattern, plus I’m making some length and width modifications, so I’m having to do a lot of calculations and pattern adjustments.  That makes for a lot more chances to screw up, which I’ve done a couple of time.  Everything’s going fine now and I’ve finished the sleeves and today I joined them to the body piece.  Only about a ball and a half of knitting left to go.

Hat details:
Pattern:  Half-pipe hat (Ravelry link)
Yarn:  Cascade 220 in 9459 Yakima Heather (about half a ball) and 7824 Burnt Orange for trim

Liesl tagged me with a fun photo game.

Here’s the rules…
1. open your first photo folder
2. scroll to the 10th photo
3. post the photo on your blog and tell the story behind it
4. tag people to do the same

The first folder in my pictures folder is our wedding pictures (Aaron and Teresa’s Wedding – anything with Aaron’s name in it is at the top).  Number 10 is a photo of my husband’s family, after the ceremony, in front of the temple we got married in.  I can’t believe how different we all look now.  The family has grown to include two more in-laws, five nieces and a nephew on the way.

Our anniversary is next week and I’m proud to say we’ve made it eight years since that beautiful day.  It’s been a roller coaster ride (as all marriages are), but a good one.  I’m so happy I married that baby-faced man in the photo.

I’m going to tag my friends Ali and Rachel (if she’ll do it – she doesn’t usually put photos on her blog), because I really want to see what they pull out of their photo folders, and anyone else who wants to play along.

My creative space this week is my new design wall/curtains.

I took the doors off of the closet in my office/craft room soon after we moved in the house and have been meaning to make curtains for the opening ever since.  I don’t have a wall available to hang a piece of flannel on for a design board, so I decided to hang some inside of the curtains instead.  I attached the flannel at the top with decorator’s velcro, which is one piece of sticky back velcro and one piece of sew-in velcro.  The curtains are just basic undyed muslin which I plan on practicing my stenciling skills on later on.

Check out more creative spaces over at Kirsty’s.

I’m an avid online fabric shopper.  There just aren’t very many stores around here that sell the fabric I want.  My two local quilt stores don’t carry any Free Spirit Fabrics and don’t get me started on their Japanese fabric selection (you’ve got to know I’m kidding, right?).  Anyways, back to the online stores and, more specifically, those online stores’ blogs.  I love store blogs.  I love seeing what fabric they’re getting in, inspiring quilts and projects, tutorials, giveaways, sale announcements, and just about anything else they post.  Basically, they’re great, you should read them.  I put together a little list at the end of the post of all the ones I read, which, of course, I think you should check out.

So, my favorite store blog right now is the Fat Quarter Shop’s.  Mostly because of this:

That’s a 40 (FORTY!) fat quarter bundle of all of the fabrics in Moda’s Aster Manor line.  Which I won.  From the Fat Quarter Shop.  Pretty dang AWESOME, no?

I still cannot believe I won that much fabric.  I really want to tell you about how I won it, though.  Go check out this post on the Jolly Jabber.  See that appliqued tree.  See the whole quilt.  Totally looks familiar, right?  Of course I had to enter!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I like both traditional and modern quilting.  This definitely falls in the traditional category.  I would really like to join the BOM but can’t decide if I can spend that much money right now.  I’m looking for another part-time job to supplement my stay-at-home work and if I find one soon, maybe the BOM membership can be my reward.

Check out the FQS’s other BOMs and clubs as well (here’s a link to all of them).  I seriously wish I had the money to do both the Green Piece and the Pennsylvania Dutch clubs.  Sigh, to be independently wealthy.

Oh yeah, and here’s the list of the store blogs I promised:

Taking a break from knitting Aaron’s sweater to work on quilting my Penn Dutch Tree block.

I’m about three-quarters of the way done with the block.  The sweater is coming along, although I’ve had a hard time sticking to it.  I’m not a very fast knitter and this pattern is insanely boring (lots and lots of stockinette). I’ve just joined the second ball of yarn – only six more to go!   It’s great for catching up on all the tv I want, though.  I’ve been watching a marathon’s amount of Warehouse 13 and just got the last disc of season 1 of Buffy from Netflix.

I’ve also been cutting out squares for a zig-zag quilt.  I’m using the ten pink, grey, and white fat quarters I picked up from Superbuzzy a couple of months ago.  Can’t wait to start laying this out and sewing triangles.

Head over to Kootoyoo for more creative spaces.

I never could decide which color of yarn to buy for the trim on Aaron’s sweater, so I ended up ordering a whole bunch of ones I thought (and you, from previous suggestions) would look good.

The Webs box showed up on Friday and I dumped the whole thing out on the floor and grabbed Aaron.  Hey, it’s his sweater, he should choose, right?  Then the both of us sat down on the floor, made the requisite “no” and “maybe” piles, and ended up choosing the same color as our favorite.

Light sage-y green, as suggested by my SIL Lindsey in the comments ages ago.  We think it looks pretty good.

I’ve already done a gauge swatch, taken Aaron’s measurements, measured a favorite sweater, made pattern adjustments, and last night, cast on.  I’m through 2 1/2 inches of ribbing (we watched Benjamin Button last night and the first disc from season four of Prison Break today) and I’m hoping to finish by the time Aaron leaves on his annual guy’s trip the third week of October.   We shall see.